posted at 12:41 pm on May 21, 2014 by Allahpundit

Alternate headline: “Noted liberal hopping mad about predictable results of government-run health care.” I’m embarrassed to say that I thought there was a slim chance that he’d can Shinseki over this, even though that completely contradicts his M.O. over the past five years. The politics of it, with sick veterans left to die on secret wait lists, are simply too terrible for inaction, I figured. And it’s not like the administration was blindsided. They’ve known about “unreliable” wait times at the VA since before Obama became president; candidate Obama told veterans that addressing long waits was an “urgent” priority that he’d deal with as C-in-C in a now infamous stump speech in 2007. He and Shinseki had every reason to treat the VA as a code-red problem from the moment they assumed office. Instead, as far back as year two of the Obama administration, VA executives were sending around memos warning of questionable scheduling practices. And now here O is, in 2014, babbling about how he’s launching a new investigation and new studies, yadda yadda yadda, before deciding what to do.

Watch the second clip below, of CNN’s Drew Griffin, for the proper response to that. There have already been numerous studies, including by the VA’s IG, of the wait-time problem. How do you think Senator Obama knew that the problem was “urgent” in the first place? Everyone knows — and yet, given the opportunity to fire Shinseki and vowing that he “will not tolerate” this, Obama once again … decided to tolerate it. Shinseki’s still in command, for now, leaving O with basically nothing to say for himself here except rote expressions of outrage. This felt like the sort of presser that the president typically gives the day after a midterm election in which his party’s taken a beating: He has nothing to say, but he feels obliged to show his face lest he be accused of cowardice. That was his goal today — stand up in front of the camera, check the box by looking appropriately outraged, and hope that the time you’ve just bought yourself ends up with the media and the public losing interest and eventually focusing on something else. This guy ran on accountability and now, five years later, here we are. He’s completely checked out, as even some Democrats lately have begun to admit.

Blowback

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Incompetent, self-interested bureaucrats providing sub-par (and dangerous!) healthcare services. When it become a public scandal, politicians will proclaim to be angry, hold a hearing or two, maybe put a couple of mid-level people on ‘administrative leave’, then everything will go back to the same dysfunctional way it was before.

Next Politian will campaign on making it better, but won’t actual make it better, and then the cycle will repeat!

I won’t say that Obama “consciously” thinks of veterans as “Old white man that didn’t vote for me anyway”, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the thought hovered somewhere in his subconscious. There is just no excuse from anyone, from any party for this mess- Put Mitt Romney in charge of it- let him fire a whole bunch of civil service union employees.

He’s completely checked out, as even some Democrats lately have begun to admit.

Presidentin’ is hard!!!

Another way you can tell he has checked out is that he hasn’t tried to blame this on Bush yet. I have yet to hear any moaning about “two unnecessary wars charged to the national credit card” leading to all these problems at the VA. In fact, I’m stunned that none of the Democrats I’ve heard recently have even mentioned the Bush Administration in all this. A few years ago, hell, even just last year, “it’s Bush’s fault” would have been the first and only item on the list of talking points. I must admit thought that I haven’t been following this very closely, so maybe some Dem somewhere has tried using this excuse, and I’ve just missed it……

He was lame before he even took the oath of office back in January 2009. Unfortunately, too few people realized it. Too many were blinded by skin color, and suffering from a severe case of Bush fatigue that clouded their judgement.

He should send Ambassador Rice out go on the Sunday news shows and let her explain to everyone that the waiting lists were a ‘spontaneous demonstration’ due to a you-tube video making fun of the VA. There are probably several dozens out there, so this would be believable for all the Democrat faithful.

And she can make fun of anyone who says there was an organized plot to hide the failures of at VA facilities to meet wait-time targets. And she can say ‘all the questions have been answered’, to help out Jay Carney.

And to ice the cake, she can say those veterans that committed suicide were the fault of the ‘sequester’ or something, not mismanagement by zero and company. So if the Republicans had not proposed and demanded the ‘sequester’, many lives could have been saved.

Of course all those statements she might make are false, but the NYT and other MSM outlets will parrot her statements as fact with no checking, so why bother trying to spin the truth, when a bald-faced lie will pass unchallenged?

I won’t say that Obama “consciously” thinks of veterans as “Old white man that didn’t vote for me anyway”, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the thought hovered somewhere in his subconscious.

Although the percentage of blacks in the military has declined a lot, all those black soldiers who joined in the late 1970s would still be getting VA medical services. So I don’t think it’s a white/black issue

Go, big gummint!! Youse can do it!! Elev3nty++++!!!! Si, se puede and all that crap…
The real problem here is defending bigger fedrul gummint, the Dems’ only answer to every question. (Hey, if the only tool you own is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, right?)

As an example, offthread, of how this White House thinks, I found out yesterday that the 500,000 acres in New Mexico that Obama set aside by executive action was part of their concept of businesses expanding investment in America and spurring job creation. Srsly?

Carney said Wednesday’s designation — which Obama will sign at the Interior Department, and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will commemorate in New Mexico on Friday — is part of a week-long effort to help businesses “invest here in America” and spur job development.

Obama looks at his department chiefs as cookie-cutter bureaucrats.
He feels he could do all their jobs better than they could.
If he fires one, the replacement is just as bad/good.
So no need to fire anyone.
Besides, no one can do anything about the failures of the Obama Administration. Obama won (twice), no one holds him accountable, the media wants Democrats in power and his approval rating is quite high.
So fake anger by Obama and the problem will be forgotten in a week or two.

What other alternative do they have? This is a govt run single payer system, exactly the same thing they demand the rest of us should be a part of. If suddenly this gets legs with the low info voter crowd (and they are numerous), all the lies of the obamacare scam job get highlighted in a way that simply can’t be swept under the rather large rug they’ve been using for 5 years now.

We’re just hours away from the entire media complex going into full denial mode. Anyone who asks any questions will be branded a racist and homophobe, the feds will crawl up their ass with a microscope and the note they sent to little katy in second grade calling little bobby a “booger” will be used to destroy them forever.

il Dufus is just running the standard Jarrett playbook based on obfuscation, mendacity, fecklessness, and depending on the corrupt and vapid mainstream media for propaganda and spin.

It’s the same pattern that has existed ever since BHO was ‘madder than hell’ over Fast & Furious, the NSA spying on Americans, the DoJ / NSA spying on reporters, IRS, Solyndra / crony capitalism, Benghazi, the failures of Healthcare.gov, and now the death panels of the VA.

Political and ideological activity and loyalty trumps all with this, the most corrupt, criminal, and incompetent Administration ever in the history of this nation.

Welcome to Orwell’s nightmare – right on down to the Ministry of Truth defining acceptable groupthink.

For the record, I’d like to note that Obama hit most but not all of his talking points for a phony scandal.

1) He just found out about this.

2) He’s madder than anybody.

3) He has ordered a complete investigation into this, and we must allow the investigation to do its work.

4) IF the investigation turns up any wrongdoing, there will be consequences.

What he missed was: 5) And make sure this will never happen again.

I don’t know what the significance of that is.

**

I did like how Obama told us that Shinseki, who has been in charge of the VA since way before this particular wait-listing scandal began, is the most committed of all people to finding out how to fix this particular wait-listing scandal that incidentally and in a totally unrelated way occurred 100% on Shinseki’s watch.

But yeah, Shin Shin can’t go because Dog Eater chose him and Dog Eater don’t ever make no mistakes.

This is unbelievable, dozens of vets dead and the most Bark can do is offer boilerplate harumphing about getting to the bottom of things and then walking off the stage. He’s a clueless and dangerous egotist with 2.5 years left in office; sleep tight, citizens.

I did like how Obama told us that Shinseki, who has been in charge of the VA since way before this particular wait-listing scandal began, is the most committed of all people to finding out how to fix this particular wait-listing scandal that incidentally and in a totally unrelated way occurred 100% on Shinseki’s watch.

Dolce Far Niente on May 21, 2014 at 3:29 PM

That, sir, is just coincedental. There is no substance to your blatant attempt to blame Obama or his apointee on something which is clearly Bush’s fault. \s

Just trying to cover for the kool-aids who are apparently busy elsewhere today.

If the head of a company doesn’t give a crap about customer service because the company is too big to fail customer service will go down to ZERO. Government is the biggest too big to fail entity there is.

My question is are there any state AGs that can go after Obama’s VA system (breach of contract, fraud, MURDER,…? Seams like there should be.

If you run ‘Madder than hell’ through the Obama translator, it comes out, ‘I’m bored by this, move along, nothing to see here.’

I almost think that this petulant, narcissistic, mendacious il Dufus thinks he has the powers of a ‘jedi’ – these phony pressers are more about il Dufus waving his hand and telling the people that there’s nothing here…and since it only works on the weak-minded, only the WH Press Corps actually believes there is nothing there.

Still, the gubment clerks and bureaucrats running a civilian single payer system would be immune to graft, corruption, or criminality because their employment applications would specifically note that such activity is forbidden on pain of a two-week paid furlough.

Fifty days after a Gulf rig explosion sparked the largest oil spill in U.S. history, a frustrated President Obama said he would have fired BP CEO Tony Hayward by now.

In light of Hayward’s comments that the environmental impact would be “modest” and he wanted his “life back,” the president told NBC News that Hayward “wouldn’t be working for me after any of those statements.”

In the interview that aired today, Obama defended his decision not to speak with Hayward.

“I have not spoken to him directly,” Obama said. “Here’s the reason. Because my experience is, when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he’s going to say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions.”

Obama also leveled his anger at those who criticized the way he has handled the crisis, saying he was there long before “most of these talking heads were even paying attention.

“I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar,” he said. “We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

“Getting to the bottom of it,” if I recall correctly, is Stage 4 of Obama’s scandal process. It will be followed in order with dragging out the investigation, refusing to turn over subpoenaed evidence, then not holding anyone accountable, and finally by declaring it to be old news.

Incompetent, self-interested bureaucrats providing sub-par (and dangerous!) healthcare services. When it become a public scandal, politicians will proclaim to be angry, hold a hearing or two, maybe put a couple of mid-level people on ‘administrative leave’, then everything will go back to the same dysfunctional way it was before.

Next Politian will campaign on making it better, but won’t actual make it better, and then the cycle will repeat!

Why can’t people see this?

LilyBart on May 21, 2014 at 1:57 PM

Common sense says you’re right.

But let’s take it a step further. Leftists want “single payer” health care. Well, single-payer exists already here in the US, and has for years: on Native American reservations. How has that worked out? To think that Leftists want that model for the entire country is sad.

I watched the CNN clip and it appears that Drew is shell-shocked and almost at a loss for words. He’s despondent and crushed that the genius they’ve been covering for, could possibly be as incompetent as conservatives have said.
This apparent loss of faith by a media sycophant, on national TV, was very telling…he looks like somebody told him there’s no Santa Claus.

We were listening to this remix of the Won’s greatest hits when he added the Period after the mad as hell. That was a poke in the eye to everyone because he had to remember how he got roasted over keep your plan, keep your doc, period. He will do nothing and the vets will continue to suffer.

Where is the pic of the mooch holding that sign? Anyone? Bueller? The prez doesn’t give a sh!t about our vets. He doesn’t give a sh!t about Benghazi. He doesn’t give a shit about the IRS targeting people. He doesn’t give a sh!t about obamacare being a massive failure. He doesn’t give a sh!t about the Ukraine, but he will make sure Michael Sam knows how important to the U.S. he is. He will make it to his $30k dinner fundraisers. The guy is a douche bag and anyone expecting anything other than massive douche baggery, well, good luck with that.